Spotlight on Protect

Date published: 1 October 2025

Authored by: Protect

This Spotlight is a complementary blog to the first issue of WIN's Global Update.

Introduction to Protect

Protect was one of the world’s first organisations set up to specifically address whistleblowing. Originally formed in 1993 and called Public Concern at Work, our initial charitable objective was to promote ethical standards of conduct in the workplace. We did this through training employers, advising individuals who were unsure whether or how to raise their concerns, and through public education.

However, a law to protect whistleblowers was soon considered necessary to address such tragic but ultimately foreseeable disasters and scandals such as the Piper Alpha oil rig, the Zeebrugge Ferry disaster and the collapse of the international bank BCCI. A growing interest in public accountability led to two backbench MPs in the UK Parliament working with us to present legislative bills to parliament, one of which became the Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA) 1998. PIDA has gone on to be used as the model for legislation around the world.

Over the course of the past 32 years, we have continued to evolve (changing our name to Protect), developing a sustainable charity model and extending our reach and influence. Our free, confidential whistleblowing Advice Line now supports more than 3,000 whistleblowers each year, and we work with hundreds of organisations supporting, advising and training teams on improving their speak up arrangements. This year, we won a prestigious Employment Law Team of the Year award, and we have trophies on our walls recognising our recent work promoting environmental whistleblowing.

Protect also plays a significant campaigning and lobbying role. Notable successes over the years have included:

Lobbying successfully for amendments to improve our whistleblowing law, such as the introduction of vicarious liability for employers, moving good faith to be relevant to remedy only, and a requirement for regulators to publish annual reports.
Establishing the Whistleblowing Commission in 2013, which made a number of recommendations, including the development of a Code of Practice for Employers.
Intervening in landmark Court of Appeal and Supreme Court cases, leading to further amendments to the law, for example, extending the definition of worker to trainee doctors and district judges and defining the public interest test.
Contributing to the development of the landmark EU Whistleblowing Directive as part of WIN and the whistleblowerprotection.eu coalition

Protect’s Mission

Protect’s aim is to protect the public interest by helping workers speak up to stop harm and wrongdoing.

Our whistleblowing Advice Line is the beating heart of our charity. With a team of legally trained professionals, supervised by qualified lawyers, we provide free, confidential and expert advice taking enquiries from every sector. Many of those getting in touch are in crisis; last year, more than two-thirds of our callers told us they were being victimised, bullied, facing dismissal or felt forced into resigning. We talk through an overview of the law and help them gain control of their situation, providing information on their legal options and signposting to other supportive organisations. A vital part of our work is helping individuals raise concerns, particularly if their employer isn’t listening. The UK’s whistleblowing law encourages but doesn’t require the whistleblower to go first to the employer, so we help callers identify where they can take their concerns – to regulators, MPs or the press.

Some cases are a one-off phone call or email, but for others, we provide ongoing phone support for months and even years. Last year (2024):

Calls came from a wide variety of sectors, with most calls from health and social work (30%), education (13%) and financial services (7%).
2 in 5 callers (40%) said their whistleblowing concern had been ignored by their employer.
More than half (51%) of our callers were on a low income
The top three areas of concern were:
- staff conduct
- bullying, discrimination and harassment
- financial malpractice

We chart these trends in our annual impact report.

Alongside our support for individual whistleblowers is the work we do directly with employers to promote ethical standards of conduct in the workplace. This is a core part of our approach – helping organisations adopt best-practice whistleblowing arrangements and get it right in the first place! Last year, we worked with more than 300 employers, reaching in excess of 1.5million members of staff, and conducted whistleblowing training for just under 900 delegates across more than 60 courses. We have developed an audit tool for employers to measure the success of their whistleblowing arrangements and benchmark their processes against their peers.

Why being part of WIN matters to Protect

Learning from others is part of the DNA of Protect. Prior to our establishment in 1993, for example, we travelled to the USA to visit and speak with our counterpart, the Government Accountability Project (set up in 1979). We were interested in different models of working with whistleblowers and supporting institutional change. The Whistleblowers-Netzwerk (established in 2006) did the same thing and came to visit us in the UK prior to finalising their structure. All three of our organisations helped co-found WIN. Over the years, international delegations visited our offices to discuss what we were doing in the UK, and we were invited to run workshops and share our work in South Africa, Nigeria, Korea, and Australia to explain what we do and how our laws worked.

We hugely value the networking opportunities that being part of WIN continues to bring and the chance to share and learn from other organisations. It is very helpful to bring international examples of best practice to policy makers in the UK and offer UK examples to other international organisations. On a practical level, our work sometimes involves supporting UK individuals across country boundaries, and WIN is vital in advising our staff on who our callers might go to if they need whistleblowing assistance outside the UK.

In recent months, we have sought support for our own campaigning work across the WIN membership and produced powerful endorsements and letters of support. By working collaboratively, we can have more impact.

Being part of WIN is also a sobering reminder that while whistleblowing isn’t perfect in the UK, the challenges and consequences around the world of speaking up can be significantly worse. While blowing the whistle in the UK can, in the most extreme cases, be career ending, it generally isn’t life threatening.

The Current Challenges Protect Faces

Once a world leader, the UK’s whistleblowing law is now lagging behind international standards and failing those it was designed to protect. This year the UK government has introduced significant legislation to bolster workers’ rights – and we argued it should incorporate greater protections for whistleblowers. Despite the House of Lords agreeing to our amendment, the Government has not yet accepted it. But we have built a stronger coalition of support among politicians of all parties and forced the government to concede that the current law and the status quo is inadequate.

Whistleblowing in specific sectors, especially when issues of national interest and security are at stake, has become a focus issue for us this year. The UK government is reviewing whistleblowing procedures in the armed forces. Defence and security staff don’t benefit from general employment rights but nevertheless experience toxic cultures and wrongdoing. A long-awaited “Hillsborough Law” bill has also been announced which will force public officials to tell the truth during investigations into major disasters. This will have big implications for the public sector – from civil servants to those working in the emergency services. We will be tracking these legal developments to ensure accountability is prioritised and any new laws can be delivered successfully.

With whistleblowing relatively mature in some UK industries and sectors, Protect finds itself competing with law firms and specialist consultancies to provide support services to businesses. However, no one else has 30+ years expertise, or the experience of seeing whistleblowing in the round: we work with the very best employers, and we see the very worst impact on individuals through the legal Advice Line. Demand for our legal advice service is growing year on year, with more people contacting us seeking support and guidance. We are adapting our services and improving the amount of information we provide on our website, including developing templates for use by the public.

Whistleblowing has never been a party-political issue, but nor is it a burning priority for reform (see below). Post Brexit, our challenge is to encourage reform of our whistleblowing law to bring it back to international best practice.

Upcoming from Protect

This year, we have delivered several key pieces of research. In February, we published The Cost of Whistleblowing Failures, examining the cost to the taxpayer from whistleblowing failures across three of the UK’s biggest scandals. In each case, we calculated the financial impact levied on central government – and by default, the taxpayer – including the costs of public inquiries, police investigations, delays to essential building projects and compensation payments. This work, as part of our legal reform campaign, set out a number of recommendations to avoid similar future scandals.

To mark World Whistleblowing Day in June we published a short briefing examining how generational perspectives on whistleblowing are evolving in the UK. Our report, built on focus groups and online surveys, offers key insights for employers seeking to support whistleblowers and foster a workplace culture that encourages openness across all generations.

And this year we have continued to develop our Advice Line feedback project – an automated process gathering data on the effectiveness of our legal advice service. This project is key to ensuring we’re adapting and responding to the needs of our callers and has already led to some significant changes to the ways we offer advice and deliver our service.

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